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Website design
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A programme for psychiatric registrars, providing training across several years so as to achieve the RANZCP Fellowship qualification. See this page to find out what RANZCP training involves. Some details about the Auckland programme There
are five RANZCP training
programmes in New Zealand and the Auckland programme is the largest,
with about 80 registrars in Auckland and Whangarei. Whangarei, in
Northland, is a regional satellite of the Auckland programme and has 4
to 6 trainees. The Auckland programme's main base is at the Training
Centre on the Greenlane Clinical Centre site, next to Cornwall Park in
Auckland. Within Auckland, trainees work in various posts across the
three local District
Health Boards
(DHBs) so as to complete a number of
different six-month training posts over several years. You may wonder
about becoming part of quite a large programme, such
as Auckland.
It's not impersonal however, as the Training Centre staff are
very
approachable, the Director of Training does a lot of teaching and your
local Training Facilitator will make contact and meet with you. Your
teaching-day cohort will generally only be about 8-10 registrars, and
you'll also be part of a smaller group of registrars in the DHB where
you're working. The advantages are in the variety and breadth of posts
available, especially for subspecialty advanced training. Auckland can
offer Advanced Training in all seven of the College's subspecialty
Certificate Programmes, unlike many smaller programmes around
Australasia. The four
DHBs in the Auckland
Regional Programme are: Auckland DHB (central Auckland) Counties Manukau DHB (south Auckland) Waitemata DHB (west and north Auckland) Northland DHB (based in Whangarei)
Although
the mental health service
teams tend to be relatively centrally based within each DHB, Auckland
is a large city so there can be moderate commutes from home to work. It's essential for registrars
to be able to
drive and to have a car,
especially for on-call work. Psychiatric
registrars work on the after hours rosters about once a Registrar job contracts are organised centrally via ARRMOS - the Auckland Regional RMO Services. This means that transitions between the Auckland DHBs when registrars move between posts are straightforward and no fresh job contract or other paperwork is needed. When allocated within a particular DHB registrars work under their management structure and HR department, and each DHB organises its own rosters.
How the programme is organised - Governance and Operations The Director of Training, Training Facilitators and the Directors of Advanced Training together with the programme Administrator provide the operational aspect of Training Programme organisation. The Regional Governance Group comprises the Clinical Directors and General Managers of mental health services within the four DHBs, together with the NDSA Regional Director. They work closely with the Regional Training Committee in a governance role regarding registrar training, and help fund the programme, together with the Clinical Training Agency - the governmental body in NZ which subsidises postgraduate training. The training programme relies on many local psychiatrists and psychologists who provide supervision for registrars and who contribute to the academic programme. These
are the Terms of Reference
of the Regional
Training Committee.
About
the Training Centre It's based on the 6th floor of Building 14 at the Greenlane Clinical Centre site in Epsom, within Auckland DHB. See this page for contact details. We don't have the entire floor at our disposal as several rooms in the middle of the floor belong to the main ADHB computer training team, who run things such as HCC training - this means that some consideration is needed regarding noise, when passing to and fro outside the computer training rooms. As we have several good-sized rooms on the 6th floor available to us there's plenty of space to run different teaching sessions, or exams and teaching, simultaneously. The Director of Training and the Administrator have offices at the Training Centre and there are rooms where study groups can meet. The main registrar lounge has a computer with internet connection. We're trying to organise teleconferencing of some of the academic programme to Whangarei, and hope to get this set up during 2010.
There
are two cafés on site - one
in the main Clinical Centre building, and a cheaper staff café called
Oasis
in the old National Womens' Hospital
building. Then there are several cafés in the nearby shops down Manukau
or Claude Roads, a short walk
away, plus various sources of
lunch, including yum cha at the trotting club restaurant across the
road. We have tea and instant coffee and a microwave in the Training
Centre itself where there's a comfortable
lounge with a great view out
over the racetrack.  |
What
is the
Auckland Regional Psychiatric Training Programme?
week. It's a
call-back-from-home system, with no live-in call. There's always a
consultant supervisor on-call as well. Long Day call runs up to about
11pm when the Night
registrar takes
over until the following morning.
Weekends are split with either a Saturday or a Sunday about once a
month. A week of Night Duty crops up about twice in a six-month period.
When on Nights, registrars don't work during the day and attending
teaching is optional. 
Training is a complex
mix of practical clinical
experience within the DHBs, academic learning and the completion of
specific College-mandated tasks, exams and requirements, so there are a
number of stakeholders. The Regional Training Committee ensures
governance and operational management of the programme and includes
several trainee representatives, the four DHB Clinical Directors of
mental health services, the head of the 
